RFE/RL Daily Report
No. 214, 10 November 1994
HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN MILITARY COOPERATION. A meeting of the
Hungarian-American working group dealing with questions of defense
opened in Budapest on 9 November by Hungarian Defense Minister
Gyorgy Keleti, MTI reports. Keleti stressed that Hungary is
determined to join NATO. He also pointed out that only the
Hungarian air force has been supplied with the kind of detectors
that reach NATO standards. US Ambassador to Hungary Donald Blinken
called attention to the fact that Hungary's integration into the
rest of Europe is very important for the US. Blinken said that
Budapest has taken big steps toward membership in NATO and noted
that the US would provide help for improving the Hungarian defense
sector. -- Judith Pataki, RFE/RL, Inc.
[As of 1200 CET]
(Compiled by Sharon Fisher and Pete Baumgartner)
Copyright 1994, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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A tovabbterjesztest a New York-i szekhelyu Magyar Emberi Jogok
Alapitvany tamogatja.
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Reposting is supported by Hungarian Human Rights Foundation News
and Information Service.
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date=11/8/94
type=background report
number=5-18697
title=Berlin Wall/Soviet Union
byline=Peter Collins
dateline=Moscow
content=
voiced at:
Intro: The Berlin Wall would not have been built but for the
presence of 340 thousand Soviet troops in East Germany. Moscow
ordered it built in August, 1961, to stop refugees from flooding
out of its client state in East Germany. As a United States army
officer in the mid-sixties, V-o-A's Moscow correspondent Peter
Collins patrolled the western side of the Berlin Wall. He offers
this perspective on how its fall marked the beginning of the end
for the Soviet Union.
Text: Communism was finished. That's what it was. No one in
Berlin on that historic day five years ago, or watching around
the world on television, could fail to see that.
Not even in the capital of communism -- Moscow. It was the
Soviet leader -- Mikhail Gorbachev -- who perhaps inadvertently
caused the Wall to fall. In October of 1989, he visited East
Berlin. His host was the unapologetically hardline communist
leader Erich Honecker.
He did not share Mr. Gorbachev's hope that after 7o years of
failure, communism could be made to work with some tinkering
around the margins. The Soviet president kissed Mr. Honecker on
the lips. In private, Mr. Gorbachev hinted broadly that the East
German leadership should do what he was doing in Moscow,
reforming the system, opening up. "Glasnost", it was called. If
the East Germans failed to do so, he suggested, they would end up
defeated and defunct.
In public, Mr. Gorbachev used one of his favorite phrases, "Life
punishes those who delay." Such hints can spark a revolution.
Within hours after he had left for Moscow, an uprising had begun
in East Berlin, with angry demonstrators chanting, "Freedom!
Freedom!"
One month later, the Wall was gone. Four months later, the
Soviet empire was gone. Two years later, Mr. Gorbachev himself
was gone.
The Berliners' example pushed along gathering revolutions in
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the
Baltics.
Of course the collapse of communism had been long in coming,
creeping up almost invisibly on history. But to those American
soldiers who patrolled the Wall in the sixties, that possibility
seemed utterly inconceivable. Impossible. That dark, grey, grim
wall looked as solid as the huge granite Soviet war memorial at
Treptow in East Berlin.
It was at Treptow just three months ago that Germans and Russians
gathered for a ceremony marking the final retreat of the Red army
from Germany. The last of the 340 thousand Russian soldiers to
come home were given a parade in Moscow, but little else.
Among the many problems Russia has inherited from the collapse of
its empire is a disgruntled army with little sense of mission
and literally few decent places to house its officers and men.
Now Russia -- shorn of its empire -- is struggling to make do
without the wealth and captive markets it lost in its satellites.
It is a painful course, and while the events in Berlin five years
ago, were not the cause...The fall of the wall marked the start
of it all.
(Signed)
08-Nov-94 7:58 pm est (0058 utc)
nnnn
source: Voice of America
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A tovabbterjesztest a New York-i szekhelyu Magyar Emberi Jogok
Alapitvany tamogatja.
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*][*] [*][*][*]
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
[*][*][*] [*][*][*] [*][*] [*][*]
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
Reposting is supported by Hungarian Human Rights Foundation News
and Information Service.
*****************************************************************